Notes
1 ‘There are three cycles of stretches … Each cycle is one specific stretch/ position executed four times, once toward each of the cardinal directions … Separating each cycle is a stretch called nadir/zenith, a quick stretch down followed by a quick one up’ (Thomas Richards in Slowiak and Cuesta [Citation2007: 126]).
2 I am indebted to Bobbie Ellermann for giving me sight of these fascinating records of Strasberg in action.
3 For a reprint of the diagram, see Pitches (Citation2006: 119).
4 Stanislavsky's diagram is reprinted in Carnicke (Citation1998: 99).
5 See Barba's Citation2003 essay ‘Grandfathers, Orphans and the Family Saga of European Theatre’, for one salient example.
6 Tradition: from tradere: to give up, transmit (Collins).
7 Terence Mann, formerly an actor with Talia Theatre, from an email conversation with the author (2 April 2009).
8 For details of these exercises, see Leabhart (Citation2007: 116–24).
9 For examples of études from the 1920s to the 1990s, see Bogdanov (Citation1997).
10 It is for that reason that Decroux has been likened to postdramatic understandings of the body; such an observation would never be possible with Meyerhold. (See Chamberlain and Leabhart Citation2008: 12).
11 I am very grateful to Professor Thomas Leabhart for providing me with video documents of this exercise. Leabhart notes: ‘Decroux also spoke of a center “like a sun shining between the shoulder blades” but the most important center for him (and fixed point or fulcrum around which the lever of his counterweights operated) was the point a few inches below the navel’ (email conversation 30 March 2009).
12 I am grateful to The Dartington Hall Trust Archive for giving me permission to quote from the Michael Chekhov collection. Catalogue Ref. MC/S1/21/E.
13 Ian Watson (Citation2000: 1–2) draws a distinction between ‘direct training’ where the trainee learns a specific repertory from a master and ‘indirect training’, which focuses on generic skills to be applied to a range of contexts.